Skin
by Hiron Otsuki
Summary: -FF- Feathers and light are the only things I ever remember of becoming a Swan. The sorcerer is dead but his curse lingers in me. My only chance to break it is hiding somewhere in the ghettos of Tyme Ago, but she herself is already broken. Ashes Worldfic.
1. Eldrytch Manor

This is a sidequel to _Ashes to Ashes _and _Dust to Dust._

A/N: Please see my profile page for an ongoing poll at the top on lesbian fiction.

Also, see if you can spot the homage to the Indian lesbian film, _Fire (1996)_.

* * *

All I can recall of the first transformation was a white cloud bursting from the tip of his outstretched finger and stretching over me. Everything was white and pink, and I remember streaks of gold flashing around, over, and _through_ me.

When my vision stopped sparking and blurring, I was looking up at the sorcerer who had introduced himself moments before as Count Vandermeer.

"So," he said, lips curled into a triumphant smirk. "You thought to betray the boy and leave him penniless once you had found a good place to be, eh?"

_The boy. _I turned to find Roland, the second son of my noble neighbor Timotheus, unconscious—possibly dead—on the ground behind me.

"What have you done?" I said. Meant to say, tried to say. Instead it came out as a barely-musical honk.

And it was then that I realized what Vandermeer had done. My head, instead of being beautiful and round, with a heart-shaped face, was elongated and supported by a thin, strong neck that was covered in feathers. Feathers!

My arms were now turned and twisted backward, and my fingers no longer bent or moved much. My feet I could not bear to think about, and my face—ah, my face!—was no longer my own, or even human at all. I was a bird of some kind.

"Come," said the Count. "We fly." Beckoning once with the same finger that had changed me, he turned and at once changed shape into a massive white eagle.

Some compulsion beyond me ran though my form and lifted my body off the ground, skimming me through the air behind him as he took flight. The easy, magical hand under me vanished as soon as I took a tentative beat with my wings. I was then forced to flap for my life with arms that were unused to working, and fly so that I would not fall.

We flew far that day, stopping nowhere for a rest. His magic took us fast and far, over lakes and rivers--even mountains that I did not recognize—in a mere half-day.

It was as we were skimming over the first lake that the truth hit me like a mad bull.

The reflection in the water below me was huge and white, powerful and graceful, though the terror in my eyes was visible, even to me.

I was a swan.

#

Our final resting place was the grounds of a large manor estate.

It might have been a spell, or it might have been exhaustion, but it forced me down just the same, toward the pond in the back garden. I landed in a spray of orange crystal, nearly tumbling tail over head in the cool, clear water. The setting sun glowed through the trees, sending a bulging orange stream rippling over the pond's surface. I barely had time to paddle to the edge of the lawn before that same _change _crawled through my bones and my blood, and I stretched upwards on the pond's shore. My traveling clothes from before I was a swan draped over me, and I was a woman once again.

Vandermeer glowed with pride as I glowered at him. "It is such a pretty system, don't you think?" he gestured at the sun, which was rapidly vanishing behind the hills in front of the manor house.

I stared at him, confused.

"When the first light of dawn on the morning of the last day of the waning moon strikes you, you shall be a swan." I stared at him, uncomprehending. He continued as if he were blind. "When the last rays of the setting sun ruffle your feathers, you will change back into a woman. On the day of the dark of the moon, you shall be a swan for the day _and _the night. And on the first night of the waxing moon, you shall be a swan until the dawn."

No—how could this be? A _swan_, of all creatures? A silly, graceful swan? To be a swan was worse than being a Lady. At least if I were back at my father's mansion in the country, men would not be able to shoot, roast and eat me!

"Since this is the beginning of the month of March, and tonight is the full moon, you shall be a swan again in two weeks time." Vandermeer practically sang the words, and I hated him for it. He practically lit up the lawn by himself.

Then he clapped his hands and sang some more. "Ladies! Ladies, you have a new girl!"

_Ladies?_

I turned around, and across the pond they came. More swans, glowing white against the rapidly darkening water. They clambered onto the shore, looking at me with meaningful eyes.

Why were they all birds if the dark of the moon was two weeks hence?

One swan had a tiny silver crown on a necklace. It rested on her snowy, feathered breast, and unlike the others, she paraded imperiously up the shore, bypassing me completely as she waddled to stand in front of the sorcerer.

The swan glared up at him with beady black eyes, and the other swans made a hasty, shuffling exit to the other side of the garden, as far as they could get from Vandermeer and his challenger.

Vandermeer made a flippant gesture with his fingers, and after the swirl of mist had departed, a woman stood before him, scowling viciously. Rage was written in every muscle as she stood locked before him, unable to move through her wrath.

Her mouth suddenly unlocked, and the sweet night air was filled with screeching and wailing.

"Another one! Another trophy to add to your collection, and you bring no prince back for me! You bring back no prince that can break my spell!" She launched into a tirade, haranguing him about everything, from his appearance to how long she'd been there.

"And her!" she gestured at me haughtily. "You bring more and more maidens, but you never fulfill your promise to give me the chance to redeem myself. Me! A Princess!"

Recognition rippled through me. I'd only seen portraits drawn by head-over-heels-in-love painters, but this had to be the Princess Odette, the one who'd been missing for three years. She'd vanished from her bed in the night, and there had been heralds sent out to all corners of the Kingdom Trantalis, armed with pictures and a thousand-franc reward if anyone had news.

I could have used that golden incentive, had I known that she was here. Wherever "here" was.

But now it was too late. I crept away from the screaming Princess, off to where the other swans had gone.

They too were now maidens, though not huddled and miserable like I, or angry and loud like Odette. Instead they sat and lounged freely in a clearing some distance around the pond, clearly at ease with their situation.

"Sorry to bother you," I said when they looked up at my approach.

The oldest among them shook her head.

"It's no trouble," she said, looking me up in down. "Where did he find you?"

"Scotsburg, on the northern border."

Another nodded. "I'm from Hamsville."

Hamsville was not thirty miles from Scotsburg. "Why had I not heard of you?" I asked. Surely someone would have come asking about a missing woman.

"I dishonored my family," she said. "So they probably would not want to search for me. My brother intended to marry me off in exchange for a gift that my husband's family would have given him, so I left on the eve before the wedding. I did not get more than a mile from the village when Vandermeer stopped me and bespelled me."

A betrayal of men? But mine was so much worse than that.

"What made him chose you?"

Her shoulders lifted and fell in a gentle shrug. "What else? We've each betrayed a man in some way."

There were murmurs of assent from around the clearing. Maidens were perched on fallen logs, and on low tree branches—even on the ground.

"Why were you swans when I came here?"

"He likes to turn us all back into swans whenever he brings someone new," a girl said. "He says it heightens the atmosphere when we all turn back into maidens." Without waiting for me to ask another question, she posed one of her own. "What did you do?"

I told them the truth. Told them of how I told Roland I had to leave my father's land, how I had bribed him and seduced him with flirtations and winks, of empty promises that we would marry as soon as we were far enough away. And how I planned to keep none of those oaths and abandon him as soon as we happened upon a port city or town that could send me far away. While I was at it, I planned to steal whatever gold and provisions he brought, leaving him nothing. He was a man, and men could fend for themselves.

Their stories were much the same, when they came out. They all did something to betray a man in some way, whether by word or deed. Two had betrayed their husbands with each other. They were from the southeastern country of Kashmir, and had been stuck in loveless marriages to a pair of brothers. They had only just started to become lovers—lovers!—when Vandermeer had appeared in the bedroom they'd been in and changed them to swans.

Another woman had been like me, trying to get away from her father's land to something better, freer, when Vandermeer had taken her.

We had all "betrayed" men in some way shape or form.

Time passed in Vandermeer's enchanted garden, and I suppose it must have been years before there was a change.

Before I tell you that, I must tell you this: he never touched any of us; never took us to his bed. None of us, not even those women who had been married when they had been taken.

One day Vandermeer vanished for many months, leaving only his servants to take care of us. All of our needs were met; food, water, bathing supplies, and monthly issues were all the concern of by servants made from enchanted air.

The one thing they could not supply was company, so we had only ourselves to entertain. Except Odette. She was a constant source of amusement, always scheming to escape, or attack the servants. They would always gently restrain her in solid air and bring her back.

We could not fly, no matter how we tried, while we were swans. Vandermeer had always stopped us with his magic, and whatever charm he had on the sky held firm while he was gone.

We waited for him to return, waited for anything to break the horrible monotony.

And then on a chilly night one November, someone did.

A strange woman, garbed in white silks and light furs, appeared at the edge of our enchanted garden with a loud crack.

"You may leave," she said, gesturing at the sky above us. "Vandermeer is dead, and you are free to leave this place, for it is now mine."

Leave? I'm not sure any of us wanted to. It was safe here, and who knew how the world had changed in the time we had been trapped here?

I had changed drastically in my years in the garden. I was beautiful as a swan, though not beautiful as a woman. I had sought to change my appearance, to be as different as a woman from how I had been when I had been Lord Astely's daughter. I cut my hair short. I insisted that the air servants bring me pants to wear, and I stopped wearing cosmetics. I wanted to be as handsome as a human as I was beautiful as a swan.

"Are we still cursed?" I asked. Her attention riveted on me, and seemed to see through me. Her eyes were red like garnets, and something flickered there. "Yes."

"But you said we were free!" Odette cried, stamping her foot. "Free!"

"I cannot remove the curse," the woman said. "_He _has chained it to something deep in your soul. I do not know what."

"Hmph," Odette said. "I will find the greatest magician in the world to change me back to a Princess."

"You are no longer a Princess," another woman said. No, a girl dressed in black. She stepped from behind a tree, standing opposite the woman in white. "Your Kingdom passed into a collateral line some twenty years ago."

Odette opened her mouth to screech and the white woman gestured. A silver wire appeared, winding its way through Odette's lips and sealing her mouth shut.

"Do _not _yell," the sorceress said. "I cannot stand you already. As a matter of fact, you all may leave."

Well! It was all too sudden, but our freedom now stood before us. But what to do with it?

I saw some of the girls drifting towards the edges of the garden, perhaps only to test the invisible boundaries that had once held us here, but perhaps to leave entirely. "Wait!" I called. "Where are you going?"

An older swan, Aneille, turned. "Anywhere but here," she said. "Anywhere but this horrible garden."

She pushed through a screen of bushes. In the silence, we could hear high grass rustling as she pushed through. A wail of pure joy came from beyond where the walls of our prison had been, and then silence.

I never saw her again after that. Most of the girls stayed only a few days, then left to find their fortunes in the world beyond; to find family and friends, if any still lived. The girl dressed in black removed the wire from Odette's mouth, and the former Princess vanished. I never saw her again, either, but she didn't make me wonder like the other girls did.

Over the next few months, as the air servants dwindled to nothing, I was forced to find food for myself, and soon the other remaining girls, as it became apparent that through the years of living here those that had been used to scrounging for food had lost their skills, and those that had been ladies had never had them at all. I was very good at climbing the trees to pick out-of-season apples.

The spells keeping the manor in a perpetual state of mild weather also kept the trees and bushes perpetually in fruit, so we never went hungry for fruit. Meat was a problem, both to find and also because I could not bear to kill an animal since we were, two nights and days out of the month, also animals. Who knew whether any animal crossing the estate had once been a man, or a woman, and was now perpetually confined to the never-ageing, unvoiced body of a badger or squirrel?

The sorceress dressed in white ignored us for the most part, and from watching her and watching the girl when they would perform spells on the grounds, I learned to work a little magick. And the few times that someone had an injury, be it one of us or either of them, they would perform Healing magick. The girl in black noticed my interest and found in me a latent talent for magick. It would never be anything impressive, but it would be enough.

Funnily enough, she discovered that my transformation into a swan fed off of my magickal energy, keeping it low enough so that I _couldn't _do anything with it. A quick examination of the other girls showed the same thing, revealing that betraying men wasn't the only thing we had in common. I was the different one, though. I was the only one who wanted to learn how to use the Gift.

But I digress. The spells that the girl in black—I learned that her name was Harriet and that she was the daughter of the white sorceress—taught me left me drained and wanting for energy, but I reveled in my new power.

I stayed long enough to add to my knowledge the talent to change appearances, and the magicks that midwifes would kill for; that of womanly magicks that I didn't need herbs for.

And then I left.

I flew away on the first night I became a swan. I bid goodbye to the black sorceress and her white mother, and the other girls who stayed, now watched over by Harriet, turned my feathers to black onyx, and struck out on my own.

I soon learned that the world outside was a much darker place than I had pictured it when I had first become a swan…


	2. Tyme Ago

A/N: Please note the tense change. This is now in the timeframe of _Dust_ and _Ashes_, and is written accordingly.

As always, please take notice of the poll on my mainpage.

* * *

All of this is running through my mind as I stumble into the outskirts of the city known as Tyme Ago. Even the King's city is dirty, I realize, as filthy dogs and children rush past, growling and laughing among the shacks rigged up around the walls.

There is almost no magic in this city. At least none of the gentler magicks that I know, and as I trudge through the ghetto and into a better part of Tyme Ago, night falls and the air cools slightly. But this is only a somewhat better part of the city. Mages are using a power unfamiliar to me to light thin glass rods to spell out words and names, or making bad puppet shows or cheap fantasy displays. There is only one man who is clearly bent on something better than this, and what he is doing fills me with disgust.

It is his actions that pull me off my intended path to the best area of the city, and to observe him.

He takes a young woman who is obviously a prostitute, pulls her off into an alley as I watch, and within seconds I feel a miasma of dark energy flowing from the alleyway before I can react. He struts out a minute later, nearly bursting at the seams with power.

The young prostitute does not emerge, and after the man has gone a fair distance from the alley's entrance, I pick my way over the badly-cobbled street and into the alley. "Miss?" I call hesitantly. If she is dressing—I blush at the thought, but continue—"Miss, are you all right?"

A low moan answers me, and I throw an illusion of the sun into the air. It shows me the prostitute, slumped against a wall. Her clothes are badly torn, and there is a little blood trickling from two ripped wounds on her neck.

Whatever the man did to her was violent, and as I hold her hand a little awkwardly, I realize that it will kill her. She has very little strength left.

I give her what healing I can, and after screaming about a murder, I leave her. She will live or die without my help, and I have done everything I could. Now I must find the man.

It is easy to track him. That disgusting magic of his has left a trail that I could have followed even just after learning that I had the Gift.

No one tries to harry me as I go. I suppose it is an added benefit of wearing pants and a loose shirt, and wearing my hair very short, like a man's.

The strange man has just gone into an alley when I find him, and he is accompanied by a stunning girl with pale skin, brown hair, and brown eyes.

She is laughing and lounging on his arm as they stroll into the alley. She cannot know what awaits her if I do not arrive in time.

There is barely any time after I force my way past groups of men meandering down the street, and when I practically throw myself into the alley, the man looks very surprised to see me there. He straightens up from where he has bent over the still prostitute, and smiles charmingly.

"What a pleasant surprise," he says. "I did not expect to find a green mage here." His eyes widen. "And with such a curse! You will melt on my tongue."

I do not have time to react before his canines elongate, his eyes turn black, and he throws himself at me. It is only by virtue of having had a Theudo girl among the swans that I know what he is and how I can stop him.

A false sun takes flight from my upstretched hand, halting him in his tracks. He hisses and I pour my energy into the little sun, making it bigger and brighter.

Suddenly he gives a little wail and crumbles into dust, confirming what I already know him to be: a vampyr.

I approach the woman. She has stood there the entire time, unmoving. I approach her and realize that she is bespelled to not move. I give her a gentle shake, and she abruptly falls into my arms. I lower her to the ground and hold her as she shivers her way back into movement.

"What did you do?" she whispers.

"He was a vampyr," I tell her. "If ever you see a man like that again, run."

"You are my hero," she says. "I would do anything for you."

Her fingers trace the curve of my cheek, and she does the only thing she knows; her hand plunges down my chest, over my breasts, and then she freezes. "You are a woman!" she breathes in horror.

"Yes, and you were expecting?"

"A man!" She inches away a little, out of my arms. I am not very sorry to have her body not pressed up against my own any longer. She has made me ache like I haven't for the longest time.

"Why are you here?" I ask bluntly.

She blinks. I do not know what she expected from me, but it likely wasn't a question. "He offered me gold."

"No," I sigh. "I mean why are you _here_, in Tyme Ago, doing… this?"

"I am searching for my six brothers, who were turned into ravens some time ago when I was a baby," she says.

My heart leaps. There are men with curses! Raven curses! "You don't know where they are?" I ask cautiously.

She laughs bitterly. "If I did would I be here? I needed money to keep looking, but now I have begun to think that they are a lost cause."

I do not know why, but with the last of my strength I cast the last spell I learned from Harriet: that of finding things long lost.

"They are far away," some eerie spirit says with my voice. I cannot move while the spell is in motion, but I had been watching her while I cast.

She looks frightened, though she does stay.

"They are away, far to the North, hidden in a mountain. Follow the Exile's Road through the Northern Gates of the city, and when you come to a country that has fields of green shamrocks in places and you speak with strange creatures and spirits, do not turn away their aid. Your brothers names; you must speak them one by one and kiss their brows to free them. Conor, Cormac, Eamon, Fintan, Ossian, and Lonan and Lorcan. Speak their names and they shall be freed."

Her eyes widen more. "My brothers…"

She darts forward, kisses me on the cheek, and hurries out of the alley, scattering the vampyr's dust as she goes.

I slump back against the alley wall, and she vanishes around the corner.

Sometime later, I regain my strength and stagger out of the alley.

I procure a place to stay for the night, at an absolutely horrid hotel that at all other times rents by the hour, and the next day my search for a place of employment in this city begins.

I need a place to set up shop; anywhere will be fine, and the smaller the better. I do not need much space to work my magick.

#

Eventually I find a place. It is small and near a building with rooms that are available to live in, though I do not plan to live in them. I will live in my workplace.

I have thirteen days until I become a swan again. I badly need to establish myself as an "herb woman" here.

First I take myself out onto the streets. I must know who all the local prostitutes are; know their names, their faces, and their friends. If I can show that I am reputable, word of my work will spread, and perhaps I will gain the ear of a sorcerer with more magick than I have; one who can maybe break my spell.

It is barely a day before the first woman comes to my office. She wants to be told if she is with child. She is. I tell her so, and she wants it removed.

I bid her lie back, and I set my magick in motion, delving deep into her body to find the little collection of barely-there life. I sever its connection to the womb, and it sort of floats away. I catch it with the light fingers of my magick, and draw it down, into the neck of the womb, and into her passage. It might sit there until her moonflow, or it might emerge before then, from an overzealous "lover."

In either case, the deed is done. She pays me a little copper for my service, and I let her out.

Some days after my second, hidden transformation in the city, and after my "business" has picked up some, I receive another female client. I say "female" although she is, in fact, male. She wears longer skirts and has obviously gone to some lengths to remove the hair on her arms, chest and face, but I can still see the signs. Her name is Lili, she says, and she wants a glamourie to reduce the appearance of her "bits," she says, and another to make her more feminine.

"Please," she says. "I can pay gold."

I have already begun to weave the silent strands of the glamorie blanket together, but at the word "gold" I stop.

"For gold I can shape you a little," I say. I feel a connection with this woman, even though most people, I think, would shun her.

She looks doubtful. "How?" she asks in that wonderful voice that changes between tones that could belong to a deep-voiced woman and a falsetto.

"I have magick that can form your body a very little. I can try to shift your flesh and give you breasts. I know I can remove some of the hair that must trouble you so."

Lili gives me a heartwarming smile. "Truly?"

I cannot help but smile back. "I promise."

It turns out better than I expect, and Lili leaves a happier woman.

I soon attract a cadre of women like Lili, and even more prostitutes who want abortions, healing spells, or something to make "the itch" go away.

One evening I am out wandering the streets, trying to learn the true layout of the city, and possibly to find the "nice" parts of the city. This is the King's city, and since the part that panders to men and their desires is not bad by some standards, I wish to see the upper parts.

I have just begun to walk down the street called Drayme (because of the opium dens there) when I hear dull chatting and talking from a cross-street.

There is a group of women on the corner some distance down and across the street, and one is just raising a cigarette to her lips.

There is some scent around her, my magick whispers. Some magickal scent that that tantalizes me. The woman raises her eyes to meet my own.

"I'm Jeanette," I say, extending a hand.

"Cin," she replies, offering me a cigarette.

She is taller than I. I look down at her shoes as I decline, and I realize she is wearing what must be six-inch stilettos. She must be at least four inches shorter than me.

"You're not a whore," she murmurs thoughtfully. "So what are you?

"I work as an herb woman," I say. "I have a little magick, so if you have an unwanted _result _from a liaison with a man, say…" I let her figure out the rest. "It is absolutely painless, and I ask very little."

"Ah. I will keep you in mind, then."

We chat about nothing for the next few minutes, and then she vanishes into the night.

I speak with Cin sparingly, every week or so, for a few months, and by then I have quite the business.

One misty, moisty morning, I see her outside of a storefront with blacked-out windows, talking with an ill-looking woman with skin as white as snow, and hair as black as paint on a newly-coated window-frame. The woman turns a little, and I see that her lips are as red as blood. It's not lip paint.

Her eyes are sunken and dark, and she looks absolutely grief-stricken.

And she is beautiful.

"My lady?" I say to her as I approach. "My lady, are you ill?"

She shakes her head and Cin turns to me. "Hello." She smiles wanly. There is faded heartache etched upon her face as well, though upon her neck and shoulders there are faint bruises obviously made by a small mouth.

I do not waste pleasantries. "You look cleaner," I say.

She lowers her eyes to another bruise at the bend of her arm. Her clothes, I notice, are nicer and not as revealing. Her eyes, though shaded by sorrow, look happier and less drained than do the eyes of an average prostitute.

So, too, do her friend's.

"I have been…well," she says.

"She has the Princess looking after her," her friend whispers. Though I am surprised at the revelation, I am more interested by the woman. Her voice is like a bell, though lowered and strained by the effects of tobacco and constant weeping. More like a bell that has been worn and scratched on the inside as if by a trapped mouse, I decide.

"Who might you be?" I ask gently.

"Snowy," she whispers. "Also known in these parts as _she of the snow white skin_."

"Indeed," I murmur. Grief and hoarseness aside, she is enchanting. Moreso than her friend Cin, who, though also beautiful, has an irritating cynicism to her that I would not be able to ignore.

She looks startled, blushing. And then she angrily shakes her head and glares at the ground, making me wonder what I have said wrong. I had thought I'd read her aright, that she was like me and Cin.

"The Princess?" I ask. I am indeed curious, for I had not heard of this before.

"The Princess Kyria," Cin says, and though the weather is starting to chill towards late Fall again, I hear the heat in her voice.

"How?" I inquire.

"It is complicated," she says. "I cannot say."

"We should go," Snowy whispers, half-moving away.

I lean forward, catching her hand. "I do not know why you weep," I murmur, "but I should like to help you."

She pulls away. "I can't," she whispers.


	3. Leave Taking

A/N: I'm somewhat debating writing one more story in this world. Anyone wanna recommend a pairing you'd like?

* * *

I try, over several weeks, to integrate myself into Snow White's friends, to know all of them and be _their_ friend. I succeed, mostly, with everyone except Snowy herself.

To put it simply, she is not interested in me.

And I have no idea why, until one day when Snowy is ill, the name "Tink" comes up in a conversation, prompting many sighs and woeful glances towards the corner of Cin's room, where we are gathered.

"Tink?" I ask, and the girl named Rapunzel looks at me. Her blue eyes are shadowed and mournful.

"Tinkerbelle," she whispers, as if saying the name loudly will summon either Snow White or the person to whom the name is attached. "She was a fairy," she says, as though the word explains it all.

It does, in part.

I know what a city like Tyme Ago does to the fairies from the Outlands and the islands. The iron and filth in the city poison them, and the battering that the diseases that they have no immunity to does the rest. For any fairy, no matter how powerful, living in Tyme Ago for any longer than a few months is a death sentence.

And I have seen the sorrowful, longing glances Snowy gives fairies who wander through our town for a short period of time.

"Tinkerbelle," I say around a lump in my throat. "Was a fairy. And Snow White was in love with her?"

"They have the same sickness," Beauty says _sotto voce_. "It was consumption that put the final knife in Tink months ago, but it's affecting Snowy more slowly."

I knew. I suppose I'd always known, but now that someone had finally said it out loud, I knew what was wrong with the woman who'd caught my eye. A physical illness and another, more emotional one that ran deeper.

_I can heal the consumption_, I thought eagerly, but what of the wound in her heart? What of the longing she had for the dead fairy, Tinkerbelle?

I don't know if I _can _heal it. I want to try, even though she won't let me near her.

Cin has continued her affair with the Crown Princess, and one day I catch them. Not in the act, of course, but merely spending time together, which is odd for something that should be only sexual.

The Princess is warmer than I expect. Though the clothes she wears are those of the servant variety, her high cheekbones and the planes of her face speak for themselves, as well as the purple eyes. I can certainly see why Cin is attracted to her. I dare not say 'in love,' for I do not presume to know Cin's heart.

No commoner could have those eyes, or that presence of something otherworldly. There is, perhaps I, but I am an anomaly, and all friends with whom Cin considers herself close know of her relations with the Crown Princess.

They are in the apartment that Cin shares with Rapunzel when I come upon them. I have come to seek Cin's advice on Snow White, but when I see that her attention is otherwise distracted, I decide that it would be better to come back later.

Yet the Princess Kyria stays my wandering feet with a motion of her hand. "You are troubled," she says instead of a greeting. Her wine eyes unfocus, and her lids drop down.

Cin does not look worried, and the Princess stares at me with a half-drunken look. "You should not worry so," she says quietly. "I have met Snow White, and she is stronger than you think. She may yet come to you."

I shake my head. "I do not wish to make her forget things she would rather embrace." _She half lives in the past_, I want to say. She wanders through the days she spent with Tinkerbelle the fairy at her side, never wondering, never dreaming of what could be in her future.

Kyria just looks at me. "You both live too much in the past."

Her eyes unfocus, and only _then _do I bow in the presence of royalty, and am introduced to the Princess as myself. "Jeanette, Princess. She is a swan maiden."

I am shocked. "How did you know?" I ask. I have been careful around the girls. No one should have seen me change.

"There were rumors of a swan maiden during your first few weeks here, of a _woman_ who is a swan on certain days of the month, specifically the dark of the moon," Cin explains. "Though you look like a boy--a young man at best--you vanish on the dark of the moon. And I've found swan feathers scattered in the streets about your flat."

"Do the others know?"

"No. None know. _Snowy_ doesn't know," she says, though her emphasis on the name means that I should tell Snowy.

"And she shan't," I say firmly. "She won't until _I _tell her."

She nods, and the Princess nods. "A wise choice," she says. "There are those among my sorcerers who would sell part of their soul to possess you."

Despite that, I have to ask. "I am cursed to be a swan for a few days and nights a month. Is there any among your sorcerers who would know how to release me?"

"I do not know," she says. "And I dare not ask. I fear that rumors of your presence have reached even the ears of the highest-born sorcerers in my employ, and there are those that already would dearly love to acquire you."

_Acquire_. To acquire me, as though I am some interesting trinket or book.

"Do not tell them of me," I tell her. Even though she is the Princess, it is me who is at stake, and I feel that I am within my rights to demand this of a member of the royal family.

Kyria observes me seriously, and instead of calling her guards, she smiles. "I was not going to," she said. "You value your freedom and I value my own to come here to see Cin." She gazes almost lovingly at my friend.

Ah. So the Palace does not know that she comes here. It is as well, then. We do not need the presence of the Guard around us.

I say nothing, and soon I excuse myself.

#

It is barely a week later when we--Snowy, Briar Rose, Rapunzel, Beauty, and I--receive notes from Cin, telling us to meet her at the apartment.

When I arrive--for I am the last to arrive--I am greeted by the sight of a Princess with hacked-off hair and bright features paintless and dulled by powder, Cin with better clothes than she has ever worn, and both of them dressed to travel.

"We're leaving," Cin says bluntly as soon as I sit down on the cheap couch, between Snowy and Rapunzel.

"What?" Rapunzel sounds shocked. "Where-how--"

"Why?" I ask.

Kyria has stared only at the floor, and I can sense great grief emanating from her. Still, she does not speak.

"The King is dead," Cin says softly.

"Kyria's father?"

The Princess flinches.

"Do not call him that," Cin snaps. Then she looks regretful. "I don't mean to snap, but the King is--he _was_--" she pauses, almost searching for words. "Not a very nice man," she finally finishes, casting a worried glance at her lover.

"How?" I ask.

Then Kyria raises her eyes to meet mine. There is pain etched in her gaze. Not only loss, but something almost physical. Trauma. Heartache. Fear. And strangely enough, relief. "I killed him," she whispers. It is so quiet I can barely hear it.

Where has the strong, confident Princess who courted our Cin gone?

What I can feel from her is the same I feel from any girl on the streets who has been assaulted by a man. Had the King--was it possible that--

The answer in her eyes is all the answer I need, and suddenly I am glad that this man is dead.

"Where will you go?" Beauty asks.

"Somewhere far away," Cin says. "Somewhere we can start over, be safe from all of the filth in this city."

I nod, and I look over at Rapunzel. Terrible sadness shadows her eyes.

"We'll send some word of how to find us," Cin promises. "We just--we need to get away from Tyme Ago before someone figures out what happened, if anyone does."

She looks almost frantically at Princess Kyria, and it is then that I realize that Cin loves her. A whore in love with a Princess. It is almost laughable, but somehow, someway, it has happened. They love each other, and I believe that their romance will actually work out.

But now Kyria reaches under her cloak and pulls out a large, flat sack. Cin pulls out another smaller, rounder bag.

The Princess produces a sheet of paper, and a large, obviously wrapped cloth of some extraordinary, glowing hoary fabric, and Cin spills out her own, pouring out a stream of yellow gravel. It has a dull shine, and with a start, I realize that the gravel is gold. Tiny, dull nuggets of gold. Enough to keep us _all _in comfort for a very long time. But what is the cloth?

Kyria catches me looking, and a tiny smile quirks the corner of her mouth. It is the first I have seen from her. "It is of moonbeams," she says.

Moonbeams!

"Material such as this made one of the dresses of my mother's mother," she says. "Her name was Illyria, but before she married my grandfather she was known as Donkeyskin."

I nod gravely, though I have little idea of what she is talking about.

She sets the material down on the table next to the golden nuggets. Then she and Cin stand up. "We really must be gone," Cin says.

Kyria hands me the piece of paper that had been in the package with the moonbeam cloth. "Here," she says.

I scan it quickly. It seems to be the deed to a property. "A…building?" I guess. Kyria nods. "A brothel." Her face colors, and she raises her voice. "It is for all of you. You may do as you wish with it, or return it to its former business."

I look about the room and realize that this is not an issue that should be settled now. It cannot be settled now. Though the other women, I think, are all for turning the building back into a brothel, I am not sure that should be its only purpose. But that, as I said, was a discussion for another time.

Cin and Kyria leave from the flat. We had wanted to walk them to the edges of the city, but the Princess rightly pointed out that a group would be far more conspicuous than a pair traveling alone.

So we bid our farewells and watched the Princess and the whore set off down the street, turn the corner, and vanish.

And then the real discussion begins over what to do with the deed and the gold.

We eventually settle for utilizing the deed and not selling the property, and taking half the gold and setting it aside, leaving the rest to be divided up among the five of us. It comes out to a hefty amount, and then we begin making plans for the brothel.

But it will not be just a brothel, for I will operate my little business out of a room in the building, and it is there that my talents will be best used, I think. I will not even have to leave to tend to my friends.

And it is here that I finally am able to focus my attention on Snow White.

#

It begins when I heal her consumption. She has begun growing sicker at an accelerated rate, and I know that it is finally time for me to act upon what I know and what I think I can do, rather than watching the woman I have such affection for die like some common whore.

It almost takes too much out of me, burning the tiny bits of illness out of her and healing the raw flesh left behind.

When I awaken nearly a week later, I am told that I spent the better part of two days kneeling over Snowy in a trance, and then spent the rest of my time comatose and as pale as Snowy herself. She and the others then had to divide the labor of watching me among them, spooning broth into my mouth and cleaning me when I soiled myself. It was that last part that upset me the most. I do not like the thought of people--especially my friends--having to deal with my leavings and results of my own stupidity.

But it worked, and Snowy is healed.

It is the next week--the first dark of the moon in the brothel--when I decide to reveal to them my curse.

On the first night, I choose to only show Snowy. "I want you to see something," I tell her, drawing her into my rooms at the end of the night before the sun rises. "There is something you must know about me, and I can only hope that you do not hate me for hiding it."

She nods and follows me into my room. Into my bedroom! I nervously avoid looking at the bed, and make a serious attempt at ignoring Snowy when she sits on it.

"I am not sure how to explain this the best way," I say. "I do not think a show would make the best impression, but let me say that I have no control over this, and that I do not enjoy the effects of this curse."

She perks up a little, though she is still exhausted. "Curse?"

"Many years ago--decades ago, I think," I say, frowning, "I was cursed by a sorcerer named Vandermeer."

_Vandermeer_. She mouths the name.

"He decided on his own that I was unfaithful to men, and cursed me so that for a certain amount of time every month, I am… not myself."

Her eyes flick to the door, then back to me. "What do you mean?"

"I--er--" and _now_ I fumble for words. Now, on the threshold of telling Snowy my darkest secret, and hoping that she will not fear the transformation that comes over me.

"I know you do not work for some three days of the month," she says, "and that you lock yourself away, and do not answer your door."

She eyes me. "Are you a Beast?"

"No." I have to laugh. I am not like Beauty's mysterious benefactor. He is under a curse as well; similar to mine, but different in that I believe his can be broken. "No, I am not a Beast."

"Then what--"

"I am not horrible, but I am not wonderful, either."

And then the first rays of the setting sun set the thin drapes I have set over my window afire, and I have no time to speak. That rush of light comes over me, accompanied by the sound of feathers whipping past my ears.

Snowy is now much taller than me, and she though she is still on my bed, one hand is pressed to her mouth and she looks horrified. "Oh, _Jeanette_!"

I bow my head, ashamed of what I have become: a mere animal. Stranger than most, and certainly beautiful to look at; black feathers and a golden beak, with grey webbed feet. I am awkward when I walk about in this form, but if I sit--and I do--then I have a little more dignity.

My head lowers at an increasing angle until my beak touches the floor. I cannot stand to see the look in her eyes of fear, or worse, utter discomfort.

I hear a thud, and suddenly she is on her knees next to me, tentatively reaching out a pale hand. It settles along my back, sinking into the feathers. I look back, and it looks lovely among all the pure black. I follow the arm back up to her face, reluctantly, to see her eyes brimming over with tears.

"Jeanette, I am sorry that you did not tell me sooner."

Her tears fall against my feathers and slide off without soaking in. Slowly, I rest my head on her hand on my back, and suddenly she has gathered me into her arms. My legs dangle limply, and this is indeed an awkward position. I am not a small swan, and she is unused to holding any kind of animal. I push and struggle against her and around in her arms until she is sitting with her legs tailor style, and her arms loosely about me. I settle into the near-nest that her body makes, and it is comfortable.

And she does not hate me.

#

The other girls do not hate me either, though Beauty always looks at me oddly from that point forward. I find out why when, during the last time of the month I am a swan, she is sitting with Snowy and I in my room. Snowy is asleep on my bed, and Beauty and I are playing an odd game of chess.

She is quite the odd duck, Beauty is. For one thing, she can _read_, and actually enjoys it. I did, once, but since I left Vandermeer's manor, I have had to put that pastime aside.

But she is quite good at chess, which I am fond of, and we often play, even when I am a swan. I can still move the pieces with my beak, after all.

I have just taken her castle with my knight when she takes a long pull from her glass of wine, and a takes a longer sigh. "Jeanette," she says. "Have you ever thought about--have you ever tried erm--" she seems lost for words, and her face is red and growing moreso by the moment. "Did you ever consider--oh, _damn_--attempting to mate while in that form?"

I do not understand the question for a moment, and then I take in her neatly groomed appearance. Her hair is combed and her face painted. She does not have work tonight, I remember. Her bodice is low-cut, though it is more modest than those she wears for her "gentlemen callers". Beauty's lips part invitingly, and her pupils are large with desire. Desire for me. Oh, no. And worse, it is desire for my swan form. Oh, heavens! I shake my head, but Beauty either does not realize what I mean or does not care.

She stands slowly, steps over the board towards me even as I am waddling awkwardly backwards toward the bed and Snowy.

Beauty quickly catches up with me and is just reaching for me with trembling fingers, when I cannot stand it anymore. A musical whistle erupts from my beak, and she snatches her hand back.

Snowy shoots out of her dreams and looks accusingly at us. "What is it?"

I shuffle towards her as fast as I can, and hop up onto the bed.

She frowns at Beauty. "What is it?"

"Nothing," Beauty says. She smiles at me sadly. I think she will not try this again. "We just had a small argument, and I should get going." She makes for the door. "Good night."

"Good night," Snowy says.

Just like that, Beauty is gone, and Snowy looks at me questioningly. "What was that about?"

I am too heartsick and disgusted to answer her, and I shake my head. Wearily, I curl up on the bed, tucking my head under my wing.

The woman I love runs a hand along my back soothingly. "Sweet dreams, Jeanette."

#

It goes on for months, the almost-courting between Snowy and I, although I realize that she doesn't quite realize what we are doing.

Still, she continues to see her male customers and service them for money. Though it sickens me to watch her, I can do nothing but. We live in a brothel, and this is all she knows how to do.

During the days she cleans vigorously, something I suppose that she enjoys, since she often sings to herself while she mops the floors and washes the dirty laundry. And there is a lot of dirty laundry; there are the girls rooms, of course, but it was a unanimous decision to use the downstairs rooms for customers. The girls are all tired of remembering their customers in their rooms, while they try to sleep. That is why the "receiving rooms," though lavishly appointed and nicely furnished, are uniform and impersonalized as can be. They are just rooms. There is absolutely nothing special about them.

Really, nothing special until the unthinkable happens in one of them.

Azael Trowtheby was not out of the ordinary. Brown eyes, blonde hair, and a goatee. Completely unremarkable.

He is--_was_--Snowy's customer, and we had banned him from the brothel one month before for trying things that not only had he not paid for, things that we just didn't _do_.

I am in my room the night he returns, trying to sleep the last swan-night away. There is a nest of cloth in the corner of my room, and I am nestled inside it, nearly dozing.

It is Snowy's scream that jolts me out of an almost-dream of dancing at a strange masque.

But why is she screaming?

I only discover that Lord Trowtheby has returned when Snowy bursts into my room, slams the door behind her, and hurls herself at my bed.

I am standing in the middle of the room, alarmed, when hideous pounding sounds at my door. The slab of oak is a sturdy thing, meant to block out sounds or hold up against a prostitute's back being slammed up against it by a man's body.

The doorjamb, however, is not meant to hold anything more than that, and soon the wood around the lock begins to splinter.

Snowy is huddled on my bed in the farthest corner from the door. Her bodice is ripped, and her skirt is pulled down in the back, revealing her chemise.

She stares at me with wide frightened eyes, and mouths _I'm sorry_. I believe she has only just remembered that I am only a bird now, not a woman.

Not that Trowtheby would stop for a woman. Five of us certainly were barely able to restrain him, even with my small magicks dulling his strength. What chance have I?

Still, I must try.

The wood finally splinters apart and the door smashes open, slamming against the wall with a hard crack.

Trowtheby is standing there, silhouetted in the gaslight from the hallway. Somehow this makes him more terrifying than to see him in broad daylight. He is not a large man, but he is a very angry one.

"I. _Paid._ You. Whore." He grinds it out through clenched teeth.

Snowy whimpers. All I can do is hiss at Trowtheby. He doesn't even notice me.

"I paid you, damnit, and I _will_ get what I paid for." He takes a step farther into the room. My room. Towards my Snowy.

"You will take it and you will _like_ it," he said. "It's so tight but so good."

My prostitute hides her head, curling into a small ball.

The Lord stomps fully into my room, to the bed, and reaches down towards Snowy.

I am there first.

He sees me in front of him, hissing, spreading my wings, and just trying to seem larger and more intimidating than I am.

It works for about a second, and then he backhands me into the wall. Snowy shrieks her way out of shock and begins to beat at him with her fists and nails.

"Don't hurt her!" she screams. He grabs her wrists in one hand and slaps her with the other. "Please!"

I struggle to my webbed feet, dizzy. The world is tilting around me--no, that is me who is tilting. Or my vision.

I flap up to the bed, fully intent on pecking Trowtheby's eyes out.

He swats at me again, and I beat at him with my wings. I had heard that one sweep of a swan's wing can break a man's arm.

I learn the hard way that it is not true, when it barely seems to hurt him. He turns his full attention on me, grabs my long, thin neck, and begins to squeeze.

This is the end, then. This is where I will die, protecting the woman I love.

However there is magic, and at least I can take him with me. I begin to trigger the most offensive spell I have. It is one that will tie my life force to his, and kill him when I die.

But then--oh, then!--then there is a whooshing sound. Feathers fly about the room, battering everything and touching nothing. There is a pink light bathing everything with a weirdling glow, and even Trowtheby has frozen. Either that, or he has killed me and this is what Death looks like.

But I am not dead.

I can hear Snowy sobbing softly. Her eyes are squeezed shut and I just want to reach out and hold her. Trowtheby's grip on my neck suddenly relaxes, and he falls to the ground with a thud.

And then he bursts into chiming pink sparks, leaving nothing where his body should be. Snowy flinches as though she has been struck, though I am still standing, looking down at Trowtheby's corpse. He is dead and I do not know why. But… I am above him.

I am looking down. _Down_, not over. It suddenly registers that I am wearing the black shirt and trews I had been wearing before I transformed.

Odd attire, for a swan.

Less odd for a woman.

My legs are long and scaleless, and my fingers are no longer stretched out and fragile. I have teeth again, and space between my toes. Best of all, I do not have a tail that wags when I want to smile.

I have fingers, and hands, and an arm that can reach out.

I use it now to touch Snowy. She recoils from my hand, sobbing harder.

"Snowy," I breathe, barely daring to believe that I am _me _again, at a time when I should still be a swan. "Dearheart, look at me."

She raises her head, gazes at me through tears, and stands up abruptly. "You're alive!" she whispers.

I nod.

"And you're not a swan…"

"Apparently not," I say.

"God," she whispers. "You're glowing."

Hmm? Indeed, I realize when I examine my arm. How strange. I am nearly crawling with magickal energy.

But what to do with it? I choose to seal it away for now, in the deepest part of my body until I am ready to use it. It is not time for that now.

Snowy feels exhausted. Something inside me is telling me that, and suddenly I know what to do with a little of the energy. I feed her a little, and she perks up. Her eyes are wide. "I feel--that is wonderful," she says. "What did you do--"

I stop her question with my mouth.

There is a quick gasp on her part, and then she closes her eyes, and her hands come up to my face. I hold the back of her head gently, palming her curly black hair. My tongue plays over her lips, and then flicks inside against her own. The world spins as the taste of her swirls inside me, strangely cool and sweet and a little like cinnamon.

Her hands rest on my chest as I pull away to say, "I love you." She shakes her head.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I should have been there with you, to protect you from him--"

She shakes her head faster. "You did what was right," she says. "You saved me." And then we are kissing again, hands everywhere, touching, wanting to know that this is real and that we are here and alive.

#

It is less than an hour later when Harriet shows up.

She appears silently in a swirl of black robes, glasses askew, to find me sitting with the other girls in the common room downstairs. We have dismissed all of the customers, so it is just us in the building.

Harriet's blonde hair was bright against the black silk of her robes, as was the silver embroidery. The girls are all startled by her sudden appearance, and though I am too, I hide it well.

"Jeanette," she says. "Well done. You have broken the Swanspell."

"Swanspell?" Rapunzel asks, gazing at Harriet. "That was what it was called?"

"Yes. Some sorcerers prefer to call it the Swansong."

"How?" I ask.

"I'm sorry?"

"How did I break it? I thought it couldn't be broken…"

"Oh, that," she says. "You needed to feel real, sacrificial love for another person."

"When--did you know that from the beginning?"

"No," she tells me. "I only discovered that in Vandermeer's notes a few months ago, and I couldn't find you."

"How did you find me just now then," I challenge her. I want her to be wrong. I want to blame someone for not breaking this sooner.

The sorceress gazes dryly at me, and then I realize that the girls are staring at me. I look down to find that I am glowing again. "Damn."

"Indeed." Harriet draws something with her finger and I stop glowing.

"Thank you," I say.

She brushes it off. "Now I've a proposition for you," she says.

I raise an eyebrow.

"I've been searching the world over for an apprentice," she says. "She must be female, and she must be powerful."

"And?"

"And it must be you," she sighs. "Honestly, you're dense."

Me?"

"Yes, you, of all the girls in the world."

I smile. "May I bring someone with me?"

Harriet truly smiles. "You may bring your entire household if you like," she says, encompassing the room with a sweeping gesture.

I meet each of the girls' eyes. Rapunzel's jade, Beauty's sapphire, Briar Rose's cerulean, and last of all the near-indigo of Snowy's gaze. "Will you come with me to a manor far from here, live with me in peace, and never have to do this again?"

We have my answer when they are packed within a half hour. There is little to pack, and less that I know anyone actually wants to bring.

I make one last trip out to find the woman named Lili, and bring her back with me. "Do you want this building?" I ask.

She looks troubled. "Are you leaving?" she asks in that dulcet voice.

I decide to be honest with her. "Yes. I am going very far away with my friends, and I do not know whether we will ever be back."

Her face crumples. "Never?" she whispers it as though reading aloud her own death sentence. I suppose, for her, it is.

And I decide that I cannot leave her like this, in a body not her own when I instinctively know that now, with the power and knowledge at my disposal, I can sculpt her body as I would form wet clay. "Come with me," I say. "Please. I will change you to be what you desire."

She looks joyous. "Truly?"

"I swear it," I say.

"There is nothing here for me," she says. "Take me away from this place."

My hand is small in hers, and that is the first thing I fix as we walk back to the brothel. Her hand shrinks a little, and the skin smoothes out. The fingers thin and the tips round. Lili feels me working and tightens her hand around mine.

Her transformation has begun.

"She is coming with us," I say as I step through the door. "There is no one else I would leave this place to."

Harriet draws a door on the wall and makes it real.

It opens upon a view of Eldrytch manor, revealing the night beyond, and the few swans who have stayed throughout the years. Katerina, Ellie, Tanya. I remember them all. Even Odile is back, I think, when I see the wink of silver upon one snowy breast.

Harriet leads us through the door, and I am one of the last to go though.

With Snowy's hand in one of mine and Lili's in the other, I walk through the door, towards our new, final happily ever after.

FIN


End file.
